[SunHELP] insert one line at beginning of text file; efficiently

[Phil Stracchino]

On Tue, Sep 02, 2003 at 05:51:34PM -0400, Markham, Richard wrote:
> I need to insert a line at the beginning of text files and would like to
> know if the following would be the most efficient way of doing so.
> 
> $ cat test.txt
> This is the original test data. 
> $ echo "new line" > tmp.new
> $ cat test.txt >> tmp.new
> $ mv tmp.new test.txt
> $ cat test.txt
> new line
> This is the original test data.
> 
> This code will be intercepting print data which could be lengthy and 
> that is why I am concerned with efficiency.  If I have to go with temp
> files I will add a time stamp to avoid multiple tasks overwritting 
> each other.

Is this a one-time job, or an ongoing thing?  Where does the original
test.txt come from?

This is probably a very inefficient way to do it, yes.  But it's hard to
be able to pick a more efficient one without knowing more about what
you're doing.



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